The present invention relates to integrated circuit layout techniques, and in particular to techniques and supporting systems and databases for minimizing the effect of process variations on interconnect signal propagation delays.
In the design and fabrication of integrated circuit devices, it is often important to know with significant precision what the signal propagation delay will be from the output of each source node to the input of each destination node. Circuits are often designed assuming particular nominal propagation delay times, or particular nominal propagation delay times are sometimes designed into a circuit to meet certain design goals. Overall it is of course desirable that fabrication technologies be developed which minimize propagation delays, but once the nominal propagation delay is known for a particular interconnect, it is becoming increasingly important that it not vary significantly from that value. This is true especially in such parts of the design as clock distribution trees and critical signal paths. Precise knowledge of the propagation delays is important because too large an increase in a propagation delay might cause a signal asserted at the source node to reach the destination node too late to be stable in time to meet the setup time requirement of the destination node, and too large a decrease in the propagation delay might cause a signal release at the source node to reach the destination node before the end of the hold time requirement of the destination node.
Unfortunately, as device feature sizes shrink into nanometer scale, process variations in semiconductor manufacturing can significantly affect signal propagation delays. It has been found that the metal wire cross-section (height and width), as well as the spacing between adjacent metal lines, may vary by more than 10% from location to location on a single wafer and from wafer to wafer, leading to more than 20% fluctuation in resistance (R) and capacitance (C) relative to their nominal values. The values of R and C for an interconnect largely determine signal propagation times, so the uncertainty in R and C results in uncertainty in the propagation time. A product therefore may fail in timing if the large uncertainty in R and C is not properly managed when designing or laying out a circuit.
One common practice to accommodate such uncertainties is to over-design a product by adding timing margins, at the expense of cost and speed. This approach is increasingly difficult to work, as clock frequencies increase, taking away the available budget for the timing margins.
Accordingly, as fabrication processes continue to enable smaller and faster devices, the probability of device failures due to process uncertainties is becoming increasingly significant. Efforts may be made to improve process consistency, but consistency can never be perfect, and uncertainties will always exist at the margins where the highest performance devices are being designed. A need therefore exists for better managing the effects of inevitable process variations on signal propagation delays in the circuit.